Copyright 2002, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE/DOE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium
held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1317 April 2002.

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Abstract
Fractures and fractured zones require special reservoir
development plan. They may improve or hider the oil
production. Conductive fracture rocks may provide the
required permeability to drain an oil saturated low
permeability rock matrix. Low sweep efficiency of many oil
reservoirs may be the result of channeling of injected water
through high permeability zones that normally associated with
fracture system in heterogeneous reservoirs. In this case
substantial amount of work focused on improving the
distribution of injected water in the wellbore through different
treatments: using gelling agents, cements, cross-linked
polymer and emulsions. Other alternatives such as microbial
and surfactant based methods have been proposed. This paper
presents the results of research conducted on thermophilic
bacteria that were obtained from UAE local environment.
Coreflooding experiments were conducted on single fractured
cores to show the effectiveness of microbial treatment.
Different fracture angel orientations 45, 90, and 180 of the
axis of the flow were investigated. The effect of matrix
permeability on the treatment was also studied. A comparison
between water flooding and microbial flooding of fractured
systems were investigated. Non-invasive imaging technique
such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was employed
to visualize changes on the surface of the fracture as a result of
bacteria flow through the system.

Introduction
The use of microorganism to enhance oil recovery has for
many years been considered as possible by many
investigators. Beckman
1
realized that bacteria are capable of
producing oil as early as 1926.

Zobell
2
performed the first
detailed work of MEOR

in the 1940s. Successful field trials,
in later years, have been reported from the US, Eastern
Europe, and Australia as indicated in Ref. 3 and 4. Based on
the fact that MEOR processes were recognized nearly 70 years
ago, one would think that this technology is in wide use today.
On the contrary, the general perception is quite the opposite.
The negative perception on the use of bacteria for EOR has
been attributed to inadequate methods for transfer of
technology
5
. MEOR processes are potentially cost effective
and particularly well suited for todays economic climate.
Portwood
5
, after review of hundreds of projects, concluded
that the cost of MEOR process ranges from $ 0.25 to $ 0.50
per barrel of oil produced at the time MEOR begins, and does
not go up as oil production increases. The total cost of
incremental oil produced from MEOR is only about $2.00 per
barrel. In addition, MEOR processes are considered
environmentally friendly as verified by tests conducted by
public health laboratories that reported that the mixed culture
of bacteria is safe to handle and poses no threat to plants,
animals, or human beings
5
.
Microorganisms used for MEOR processes rely on
microscopic oil displacement for improving the efficiency of
oil recovery. The most common species are those of Bacillus
and Clostridium. These microorganisms have a greater
potential for survival under petroleum reservoirs harsh
environmental conditions than other species because they
produce in-situ spores, which are dormant, resistant forms of
the cells that can survive under stressful environmental
conditions. Clostridium species produce surfactants, gases,
alcohols, and solvents, whereas some Bacillus species produce
surfactants, acids, and some gases. In the MEOR process, it is
vital that microorganisms can travel through the porous media
and mobilize oil.
Laboratory research has shown that microbial products can
change the chemical and physical properties of oil, and can
selectively plug high permeability zones, which results in
improvement in volumetric sweep efficiency
7
. Once the
bacteria are in place, a designed volume of nutrients may be
injected into the reservoir to support in situ metabolism of the
bacteria. The result of this metabolism is the production of
cellular mass capable of initiating physical plugging. The
physical plugging results in a reduction of the original
permeability and can be expressed as the ratio of impaired to
original permeability. Continuous injection will result in a
diversion of the injected fluid from closed high permeability
zones to upswept zones and significant improvement in

SPE 75217
Microbial and Waterflooding of Fractured Carbonate Rocks: An Experimental Approach
Abdulrazag Y. Zekri, SPE, and Reyadh A. El-Mehaideb, SPE, United Arab Emirates University
2 A. ZEKRI AND R. EL-MEHAIDEB SPE 75217
overall sweep efficiency. Raleigh
8
investigated the nature of
formation plugging with bacteria using dead bacteria (Bacillus
subtillis) and four specific rock types (two sandstone and two
carbonate). Raleigh concluded that pore geometry factor was
a significant petro-physical rock characteristic for correlation
with depth of plugging. Jenneman et al.
9
used indigenous
microbes to the Burbank injection brine to plug off high-
permeability layers through the growth of microbes and to
divert injection fluid to lower-permeability, higher oil
saturation zones. Jenneman
9
observed a 30% drop in the
effective permeability to the injected fluids. Stepp et al.
10

employed polymer-producing bacteria designated as NIPER
11 (Leuconostoc mesenteroides) to improve conformance
control in porous media. They reported a reduction of
effective permeability by as much as 90% due to in situ
polymer production. Bae et al.
11
used a halotolerant, spore-
forming mesophile as microbial near-wellbore profile
modification. They concluded that the spores can effectively
reduce the permeability of sandstone cores and the degrees of
permeability reduction depend on many variables.
Recently more work focused on the improvement of sweep
efficiency using microbial flooding process. Nagase et al.
12

investigated the possibility of using a microorganism named
CJF-002 to plug high permeability zones in Fuyu oilfield.
They injected the polymer-producing microbe into 6
production wells as huff-n-puff test (single cycle). Four wells
indicated oil production increase and water cut decrease.
Based on these results, microbial treatment was conducted at
injection wells for injection profile modification and the effect
of this process has not been confirmed yet. Kadarwati et al.
13

tried to find a cost effective nutrient that will stimulate the
growth of in-situ microbes in Caltex Pacific Indonesia (CPI)
oil fields to create sufficient biological products to plug high-
permeability reservoir thief zones. The primary findings of
their study showed that several nutrients were successful at
creating bioproducts at high temperature and low salinity
conditions, and that molasses may be the most cost effective
nutrient. Han et al.
14
have simulated the effects of fracture
characteristics on the reduction of effective permeability of
fractured rocks due to in-situ bacteria growth. The results
showed that in-situ bacteria growth reduces the permeability
hyperbolically, but the porosity of backbone fracture does not
change significantly.

Material & Apparatus
Bacteria. Mixture strains of bacteria rounded and rod shape
type, both belonging to the Bacillus family, were obtained
from the UAE local hot water streams. These bacteria were
unique in their tolerance of the high temperature and salinity
conditions prevailing in the UAE environment.

Medium. The growth medium was prepared in 10,000 m L
sterilized bioreactor. The bioreactor contained 0.1 liter of
indigenous microbial solution and 3.9 liter of 5% NaCl
solution. In this medium, 10 gram of nutrient (containing
bouillon and yeast-extract) was added. The medium was well
mixed and bacteria count was taken before using the microbial
solution in any experiment. This medium was repeatedly
prepared prior to conducting all of the reported experiments in
this project to insure having fresh and the same bacteria
concentration, which around 10
5
cells/ml, at start of
the experiment.

Rock and Fluids. Limestone cores obtained from outcrops at
Hafeet mountains (Al-Ain, UAE) were cut on average into
2.23.89 cm, 3.817.74, or 3.816.02 cm cylinders using a
core cutting device. The porosity and permeability of these
cores are listed in Table 1. Crude oil was obtained from
United Arab Emirates oil field (AH). The crude oil properties
are presented in Table 2. Cores were cut according to the
required angel, see Figure1, and placed accordingly with a
tissue paper placed along the fracture plane.

Core Flooding Apparatus. The schematic diagram of the
core flooding apparatus is shown in Figure 2. Two fluid
accumulators are connected to a variable rate injection pump.
The core holder is placed in a variable temperature oven.
Pressure and temperature transducers are connected at both
ends of the core inside the core holder. A chart recorder and a
digital pressure recorder are connected to the temperature
transducer and pressure transducer respectively.

Experimental Procedure
Initial tests involved the growth of bacteria in the air curtain
bioreactor under a 22C room temperature. A 10-g/4000 ml of
the Nutrient is added to the microbial solution. The next step
is to observe the bacteria growth as a function of time.
The limestone cores were dried at 80C for 72 h. Each core
was evacuated for 12 h and saturated with 5% (by weight)
brine solution. During this step, we measured the volume of
water required to completely saturate a core in order to
determine its pore volume and porosity. Cores were cut
according to specified fracture angel (45, 90, and 180) of
the axis of the flow and paper napkins were placed along the
fracture plane. Proper zinc coating was applied to each core to
keep the two pieces of the core together and to obtain a tight
fit inside the core holder. The core was placed in the core
holder and put under a confining pressure of 200 psig. Brine
permeability of the cores was measured prior to and after
cutting the cores to establish matrix and fracture permeability.
The displacement processes were studied by two-phase flow
experiments in which injection rates, production volumes, and
pressure drops were measured. Material balance type of
analysis was performed to determine the fluid saturations.
Each core was then flooded at a high rate with the AH crude
until no further brine was produced. The residual brine
saturation for each core was calculated from the recovered
effluent brine volumes. Six runs were conducted; in the first
three runs cores (SZ5, ASD11, OP8) were flooded
individually with a brine solution (5 weight % salt) until oil
production seized (water cut = 100%). The residual oil
saturation from the volume of oil produced for each core and
the initial absolute core permeability to brine were calculated